Betty White Turned Down A Jack Nicholson Hit Because Of A Disturbing Scene

If you wanted to work with the great Betty White at any point throughout her extraordinary 70-plus-year career, your best bet was to offer her a television gig. Starting with the talk show “Hollywood on Television” in 1949, White made the small screen, and America’s living rooms, her home via sitcoms, game shows, and appearances on late night programs like “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” White was a delightful presence with killer comedy timing, her secret weapon being that daffy persona that often bubbled over with surprisingly scalding wit. You never knew what was going to come out of White’s mouth, and that made her one of the medium’s unlikeliest stars (though her presence was once ratings poison for “Bones”).

This isn’t to say White didn’t do movies. Her first credited appearance didn’t arrive until 1962, when she played a U.S. Senator from Kansas in Otto Preminger’s terrific “Advise and Consent.” She wouldn’t return to movies in an onscreen capacity until the 1998 action flick “Hard Rain,” at which point she began to work more frequently in features, typically in smallish supporting roles.

Interestingly, there was an offer on the table for her to make an earlier return to the movies in a high-profile Jack Nicholson comedy, but she turned it down for one fairly hairy reason.

During one of her many appearances on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” White revealed that she had been offered a part in the Oscar-winning James L. Brooks film “As Good as It Gets.” This would’ve brought her back to movies two years prior to “Hard Rain,” but it wasn’t to be due to White’s objection to a mean-spirited gag in the script. As White told Leno, “They had this adorable dog in it, but in one scene the guy goes down the hall and puts the dog down the rubbish chute.”

What was White’s specific issue with this joke? “Of course it lands on some cushions and it’s fine,” she said. “But I didn’t want to set that example, because you never know what nuts or kids will see it and think I can do that. The director said, ‘The dog’s fine, the dog’s fine!’. But I said, ‘I just can’t do that’.”

White acknowledged that she might’ve made a career mistake by turning down a hit, but she had no regrets. And this shouldn’t come as a surprise because White was a well-known advocate for the Los Angeles Zoo and the American Humane Society. Even a silly, seemingly harmless bit like the trash chute scene in “As Good as It Gets” was a no-go for White.